


Heat Wave

by fluentinfandom796



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Gen, Hotch is bringing the eighties back, No Romance, heat wave, look elsewhere for your Spencer Reid thirst, tasteful sweatbands, the team solves a case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:15:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26143963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluentinfandom796/pseuds/fluentinfandom796
Summary: The BAU experiences an unprecedented heat wave, which grounds them at Quantico, and of course the air conditioning is malfunctioning. Can they crack the case without overheating?
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	Heat Wave

“Hey, who turned off the AC?” JJ clutched her obnoxiously large jug of iced coffee tighter and fanned herself with her free hand as she stepped out of the BAU elevator. Garcia immediately spotted the iced coffee and intercepted her before she even got to her desk. 

“You wouldn’t happen to be offering free samples to, say, your closest friends, would you? Because, you know, it’s _hot_ and I’m already regretting these tights.” JJ laughed and nodded toward the plastic cups.

“Bring your own cup, and I’ll pour some out for you.” Garcia smiled and mouthed a “thank you” as she went to fetch one. JJ set down her bag and her coffee and surveyed the damage that the heat had already done. Suit jackets lay forgotten over chair backs, ties sat crumpled on desks or hung limply from necks, and a few daring agents had even foregone their button-ups, choosing the dressing-down from their superiors over soaking their nice shirts in sweat. Emily poked her head out of the meeting room, fanning herself with a makeshift paper fan.

“Oh, good, you’re here. We were almost ready to start without you, so come on in. And, oh my god, is that iced coffee?” JJ nodded. “I wish I’d thought of that. You might want to bring it with you.” JJ grumbled to herself about how she never gets to sit down, and maybe a desk job was actually a better fit for her, but she lugged her coffee up the stairs and into the meeting room.

“She’s alive! What took so long?” Morgan lounged in his usual chair, looking a bit shinier, but otherwise no worse for wear. To be fair, he rarely wore a full suit and tie, so seeing him in casual wear was less of a shock than whatever Hotch was wearing. Despite his attire, Hotch proceeded with his usual seriousness as the team held back laughter.

“Alright, now that everyone’s here, Garcia, please brief us on the case we’ll be working for the foreseeable future. Wheels are down due to the heat wave, but we’ll make as much progress as we can from here.” 

“All due respect, sir, but before I do that, I believe we’re all legally entitled to a briefing on what exactly you’re wearing.” The rest of the team burst into laughter.

“Yes, Aaron, please explain why I’m perhaps more confused than I’ve ever been in my entire life. Are those sweatbands? I haven’t worn those since Wife #2.” Rossi looked personally offended at this crime against fashion. Spencer attempted to save a bit of Hotch’s dignity.

“You know, sweatbands were pioneered in the 1930s and were originally made out of medical gauze—” Morgan pounced on the brief opening when Reid took a breath.

“Which would look a lot better than orange sweatbands. C’mon, Hotch, orange?” Hotch shot him a disappointed look, but Derek just shrugged. “I’m all for a fashion statement, but I’m just saying, it’s not your color.” Garcia cleared her throat.

“As much as I could listen to you talk all day, and orange really isn’t your color, Hotch, we do have an unsub to catch, so listen up, everybody.” You took this opportunity to finally sit down in your seat and take in the board. Three members of a Tennessee fraternity had been found stabbed outside the frat house. “They were all found dead a week ago. The local police invited us because of the complexity of the stabbings.”

“What’s so complex about a stabbing?” Prentiss sipped her freshly-poured ice coffee and eyed Rossi, who was clearly still perturbed by Hotch’s sweatbands.

“Well, this one had thallium on the blade, which was ultimately the cause of death.” Reid sat up straighter in his chair.

“Why wasn’t Prussian blue or hemoperfusion used to treat the poisoning? And wouldn’t the stabbing have to have taken place three or four weeks ago? Why are we just hearing about this now?”

“Hold on, Genius, I’m getting to that.” Garcia pulled up medical records from each of the three victims. “As it turns out, each of these boys fell victim to our stab-happy unsub around four weeks ago, right before fall break. They each went to the ER, but they were released two weeks later when the cuts healed. None of them nicked an artery, so there wasn’t any reason for major concern. And as for the nausea and stomach pain, there was a food poisoning scare around the same time, so it didn’t seem out of the ordinary.”

“Thank you, Garcia.” Hotch stood up, and the team was graced with the sight of his running shorts. Morgan and Prentiss laughed, while everyone else winced and said nothing. “Local PD has spoken to all of the other members of the frat, and their alibis check out. So do the staffs’. Let’s get started on a profile.”

“Poisoning suggests female, but stabbing suggests male,” JJ offered as she poured herself another cup of iced coffee.

“The poison could also be a sign of an older unsub, though,” Prentiss chimed in. “It’s more likely that a man would use poisoning than a woman would stab someone, especially young, athletic, male victims.” Everyone looked to Reid, who stared pointedly at the board. “What, too warm for statistics, Reid?”

“Perhaps, but I’m actually more interested in the positioning of the bodies.” Everyone turned their attention to the photographs of the dump site. “Thallium poison was the cause of death, which takes weeks, but the bodies were posed postmortem. The killer came back to make sure his message would be heard.”

“The question is, what is that message?”

  
  


Thirty minutes later, the iced coffee had run out, and so had most of the leads. Reid borrowed a pair of shorts from the BAU lost and found, and the conversation had now turned to other changes that would make the resident genius seem more, well, normal.

“And you don’t own anything other than work clothes?” JJ couldn’t believe it when Spencer shrugged apologetically.

“I own pajamas, do those count?” Derek laughed.

“Are they a solid color?” Spencer shook his head. “Then absolutely not. The only people that wear multi-colored pajamas are kids and rich old guys like Rossi here. No offense.”

“None taken.” The rich old guy in question mopped his brow with his pocket square. “Wait, what if we’ve been looking at this case all wrong? You said the stabbings took place right before fall break?” Garcia nodded without looking up from her laptop. “Who comes to campus for fall break?” Penelope typed a few keywords and delivered her findings.

“Freshmen can’t bring cars on campus, so either they take a shuttle to the airport, or—”

“Or a parent picks them up. What if our unsub is related to one of the freshmen students. Refine the search to freshmen who live within four hours of the campus. They’re the most likely to drive there and back.”

“2,384 possibles, sir. Any other criteria?” JJ emerged from deep in thought.

“Stabbings are typically personal. How about all of the freshmen that rush each year? Would one of them be upset enough about rejection to do something like this?”

“As always, JJ, you are right on. That narrows it to twenty-seven incoming freshmen males rejected from Alpha Gamma Rho. Thirteen were picked up the day of the stabbing, and only four were picked up by their fathers.”

“Let’s take a look at these four, then.” After perusing the bios of the four boys for a few minutes, Rossi stood up and paced the room. “Where do you even get thallium anymore, anyway?”

“Mostly electronics, green fireworks, and medical tests, although sometimes, it’s used in metal-halide lamps, gold plating, and—” Morgan cut Reid off in a moment of insight.

“Wait, wasn’t Jeremy Glenn’s father a jeweler?” 

“And I thought Reid had the photographic memory,” Garcia teased.

“Eidetic, actually.”

“Same difference. And yep, Michael Glenn has been a jeweler in Knoxville, Tennessee for, give me a sec, seventeen years. This could be your guy.” Hotch nodded.

“I’ll call local PD and let them know.” Prentiss pushed her chair back and stood up.

“And I’ll look up how to restart an AC unit. How hard could it be?”

  
  


As it turned out, repairing an AC unit was a lot harder than anyone expected. The team had just located the filter when Hotch received a phone call from Knoxville PD.

“Hotchner.” A pause. “He came peacefully?” A shorter pause. “Did he say why?” A longer pause this time. Prentiss stopped fiddling with the filter as the rest of the team strained to hear the other side of the conversation. “Alright, thank you.” Hotch hung up. “They got him.” Morgan punched the air, and Garcia cheered. “He didn’t have a gun or any sort of long-range weapon. It turns out that Jeremy was slated to be a third generation Alpha Gamma Rho member, but he was rejected during rush. Michael blamed the three boys, who were unofficial leaders, for the decision and took matters into his own hands.”

“Speaking of taking matters into their own hands,” Emily broke in, “guess who just fixed the AC?”

“Wow, just in time for Hotch to get out of that ridiculous getup.” Rossi’s nose crinkled at the mere mention of the offending outfit.

“I don’t know, Rossi, it’s kind of growing on me.” Morgan nudged the older man in jest. Garcia laughed.

“As a quirky outfit aficionado, I needed no convincing. The orange sweatbands were an interesting touch, but I respect it.” 

“Well, I don’t.” Emily punctuated her distaste with a shake of her head. “I say you burn every single article of clothing you’re wearing when you get home.”

“I second the motion, sorry Hotch,” JJ agreed. “We can get you some more fashionable running attire.” Hotch looked around.

“Since everyone is giving their unsolicited opinion on my wardrobe choices, how about you, Reid? What do you think?”

“Technically, you did actually solicit my opinion, but that’s okay. I’m not sure if someone in a button-down and borrowed athletic shorts is really qualified to pass judgment.” Hotch nodded, satisfied with this non-answer. “But orange really isn’t your color, Hotch. Even I can see that.”

“They’re that bad?”

“YES!”


End file.
